The most interesting thing about Downey Jr.’s success is that he doesn’t get paid to play a superhero. Downey Jr. gets paid to make Iron Man compelling when he’s not in the suit. All those action sequence? Those are programmed by the guys over at Legacy Effects. The heroics happen in a nondescript industrial center on Parkside Drive in San Fernando. The charismatic bumbling and speechifying is what earned Downey Jr. the biggest payday in the history of film and it’s the fact that the overhead his contract represents doesn’t even bother Marvel that augers the rise of similar franchises.

Like Iron Man, Ant-Man and Star Lord from the Guardians of the Galaxy aren’t particularly popular comic book characters. But the similarities don’t end there. Each of these leading men has a reluctant hero story arc, an eye for ladies, and a metallic mask. Each fails to take his own heroism seriously. Each is played by an actor with unusual comic timing. They may not be the same role, but they are all part of the same equation: Charisma + Action = Money. The new superhero stops robberies and steals scenes. When franchises prove bankable, the new superhero actor makes bank.

On some level, the new superhero represents a modernized take on old-school thinking. Remember when former stand-up comedian Michael Keaton was the Caped Crusader? So does Hollywood. That blockbuster was a minor success that proved major comic actors could make great movies and also that they would look stupid in a cape. Sam Rockwell would make a great Clark Kent, but he’ll never be Superman - too bad the Man of Steel doesn’t wear a mask.

It’s ironic – or something adjacent to ironic – that the highest paid actor in Hollywood spends the key sequences of his movies hiding his face, but it also makes sense. Robert Downey Jr. is his own comic relief. Iron Man is essentially a buddy movie about one guy: the hero we deserve and that hero’s drunk doppelgänger. He’s two for the price of one, which goes a long way toward justifying that paycheck.